The Spaces Between
by Faeline
Summary: Sylar/Mohinder - How Soon Is Now? - One of the things he loves about Mohinder is the man's incessant surety.
1. Chapter 1

**AN:** This site hates my formatting attempts, fyi. "The Spaces Between" will be a collection of my Heroes flash fiction. In this first "chapter" the flash fictions were written using the mp3 player/iPod music meme which says: _Choose a subject and put your entire music collection on shuffle, hit play, and write. Write for as long as each song plays and move on to a different writing when the song switches (even if it's mid-sentence). Go for 5-10 songs. _

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**-o-o-o-o-o-**

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**Song:** "Maiden Voyage" - The Clockwork Dolls  
**Characters/Pairing:** Claire, Sylar  
**Genre:** General, AU-ish

He's touched her more intimately than any lover ever will. Had her blood on his hands. Discovered the unique blend of physical matter and electrical impulses that power her.

And he thought that would've been enough.

But when the rest of the world is still around him, he finds his thoughts travel back to her. He wonders what she's doing in her day-to-day existence, the bland normality her family wraps her in.

He wonders if she thinks of him…

And determines that she _will_, if she doesn't.

He will make another trip to Costa Verde.

To see and be seen.

She's a lot like him. She won't be able to resist the opportunity to find out why he did what he did.

To find out what makes him tick.

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**-o-o-o-o-o-**

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**Song:** "Scarborough Fair" - Sarah Brightman  
**Characters/Pairing:** Peter/Caitlin  
**Genre:** General, Romance, During Series  
**Rating:** Mature Teen

He wakes to the sound of singing; the voice carrying the notes is tentative, a little wobbly on certain keys, but sweet and lilting.

Turning over in the unfamiliar bed, he stretches well used muscles, enjoying the languor in his arms, his legs. He buries his face in the pillow. The sheets smell like her. Like them. And the night comes rushing back to him and he can feel her on his skin, taste her in his mouth.

Then she's there, coming into the room, still singing softly—_remember me to one who lives, he once was a true love of mine_—and holding two steaming mugs of tea, which he takes from her and places on the bedside table.

And then, before he really processes his thoughts, he's turning, kissing her. He pulls her against his chest, rolls her under him and slides his hands beneath the shirt she's wearing, realizes that it's _his_ and revels in the spasm of possessive pleasure that realization brings.

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**-o-o-o-o-o-**

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**Song:** "Baby Blue" - Emiliana Torrini  
**Characters/Pairing:** Peter, Claire (Tilt your head and squint for pairing possibilities.)  
**Genre:** Post-Series / AU, Angst  
**Rating: **Teen

_**I can't believe what God has done  
He took the heat out of the sun  
And now it seems the world  
Is growing colder**_

Every year, they come to the seashore.

It was a tradition they started years and years ago, with the death of Claire's mom.

Today, they're remembering Monty. 90 years old, two daughters, three grand children, five great grandchildren, and a long career following his father's foot steps in the US Senate.

They don't speak, but sit silently together at the edge of the tide, letting the water run around their bare feet, their shoes cast off in the loose sand behind them, until Claire shivers—more from the thought of how much time has passed since she shared this same stretch of beach with a boy who could fly, than from the chill of the ocean—and Peter puts his arm around her, pulls her to her feet.

Her blond hair, whipped by the wind, tangles with his, and, for just a moment, gives the illusion that he's going grey. Then it passes.

They pick up their shoes and, hand-in-hand, walk the shoreline toward home.

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**-o-o-o-o-o-**

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**Song:** "Crash and Burn" - Savage Garden  
**Characters/Pairing: **Peter/Claire  
**Genre:** Post-Series.  
**Rating:** R. (Consensual sexual relationship between Peter and Claire; skip it if it bothers you.)

_**If you need to crash and burn  
You're not alone**_

When there's no one left alive who knows of your genetic connection with one another, is a relationship still taboo?

This is the question that has been rotating continually through Claire's mind and it stutters to a halt when Peter swoops down and takes her mouth like he owns it. (He's bold these days. So bold. Not the Peter she first met. But he's still _her's_ nonetheless.)

She examines the broke-down question, decides she doesn't care and purges it from her mind as she wraps her arms, then her legs around Peter. Lets him lift her, push her against the front door of his apartment, rip the flimsy excuse for panties from beneath her skirt, and slide inside her like he's meant to be there.

His hands are a vice on her hips—gripping her like he's afraid she'll disappear—his hair feathery-velvet against her jaw, and on her throat, his lips, tongue, and teeth burn like a brand.

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**-o-o-o-o-o-**

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**Song: **"I Touch Myself" - The Divinyls  
**Characters/Pairing:** Claire/_  
**Genre:** AU  
**Rating:** R. (Consensual sexual relationship between Peter and Claire; skip it if it bothers you.)

_**I want you to find me**_

She doesn't how it started. At this point she's not even sure when...no...it was those first, unseasonably warm days she'd come home for the university spring break. And the first time she'd ever doffed her clothes in order to sleep.

But it's something she barely admits to herself. And never without the adjectives _bad_ and _wrong_ and _sick_ coming beforehand, despite the fact that those words aren't appropriate; they don't describe how she feels.

It's something she'll never admit to during the daylight hours.

But on these summer nights, when the house is quiet and her parents are asleep, and Lyle is, at the least, barricaded in his room, she locks her bedroom door, opens her window and lies down on her bed to wait.

When a noise that sounds like the wind brushes through her curtains, she pushes her night shirt up, slips her panties off and runs her hands up and down her thighs, over her belly, between her legs—finds her labia already damp from anticipation—and it seems like it's only a matter of moments and a few firm, quick flicks of her fingers before she's coming to the image of his face—that looks nothing like her, Thank God—and with his name falling from her lips in a rushing whisper.

That's when she turns over, faces the wall, squeezing her eyes shut as she tries to catch her breath, her dignity…the shame she should be feeling.

And the wind that is not a wind settles on the bed next to her, and he smells like leather, like clean human skin…like _her_ Peter.

He grasps her hand, sucks the fingers she'd used to get herself off into his mouth and bites down gently. Then he uses her wet fingers to trace the edges of the thick scar that runs between his brows, from his temple to his cheek.

As a final step to this nightly ritual, he always places a kiss in the palm of her hand, flicks his warm, wet tongue against her lifeline.

And then he's gone with a rush of wind.

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**-o-o-o-o-o-**

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Authors love reviews.


	2. Desolation Row

_He's getting ready for the show  
He's going to the carnival tonight  
On Desolation Row_

**"Desolation Row" – Bob Dylan**

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_**-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-**_

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He's in a nondescript hotel room, in a nondescript town, and the blood of a nondescript prostitute—_Mary_, she'd said,_ my name is Mary_, and he'd had to hold back a laugh—is drying on the threadbare rug.

He washes his hands in the dingy bathroom sink. On the vanity, a silver ring catches his eye. He picks it up, turns it between his fingers, holds it in his palm. Then he's not in the room anymore.

It's yesterday. He's on the street a few blocks from here. He sees the man—lanky, unremarkable, wearing crumpled business clothes—who'd given Mary the ring.

The ring had belonged to the man's wife; she' run off, taken the kids, left the ring.

It was more than enough payment for what he'd wanted from Mary. What he wanted to do to her. He'd put her on her knees. Called her by his wife's name. Slapped her. Then bent her over the mean wooden dresser and fucked her, unprotected, until she bit her lip—breaking the skin—and begged him to stop.

Sylar shudders, blinks his eyes open and is greeted with his own reflection in a filthy mirror. He cracks the vertebrae in his neck to release the tension that had taken him with the sudden onset of the vision. This new ability would take a little getting used to.

He steps out of the bathroom, looks once at the half-clothed form on the bed. The pillow, where the ruin of her head lays, is soaked in blood. But Mary looks…at peace.

He drapes her discarded shirt over her—covering her naked torso and the hand-shaped bruises where yesterday's John had gripped her around her waist—before flicking off the light and shutting the door behind him as he walks out into the night.


	3. Fly

**Title:** Fly  
**Song:** "I'm Sensitive" - Jewel  
**Characters/Pairing:** Nathan, Peter, Angela  
**Rating:** G  
**Genre:** Pre-Series  
**Warnings:** None  
**Notes:** Written using the mp3 player/iPod music meme which says: _Choose a subject and put your entire music collection on shuffle, hit play, and write. Write for as long as each song plays and move on to a different writing when the song switches (even if it's mid-sentence). Go for 5-10 songs. _

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_I was thinking that I might fly today  
Just to disprove all the things that you say _

"Nathan! Look at me. I can _fly_."

He's taken Peter to the park.

10 years old and the kid's still pretending to be a super hero. At least Nathan had managed to talk him into leaving the cape at home today.

"That's great, Pete." He eyes the boy perched on the top rung of the jungle gym. "Now c'mon. Ma'll have my head if I don't get you back in time to have a bath before the party."

"But, I _can_ fly." In Peter's voice is the kind of heartsick disbelief that only a 10 year old can convey when his older brother, his hero, doesn't believe in him. "I'll show you."

And Peter jumps.

Nathan can almost dismiss the sight of his baby brother hovering, for just a moment, in mid-air as a trick of the light, the too many jack and cokes he'd swigged at his pre-birthday party the night before.

Unfortunately, Nathan's not able to dismiss the wrenching cries or the lumpy evidence of the sprained—_possibly_ broken—wrist he sees as he picks Peter off the hard packed dirt and sets him on his feet.

Or, later, the pinched, secretive look Ma wears on her face when Peter, now medicated with his wrist braced and bandaged and clam-happy on the table in the ER, tries to tell her about his flight.


	4. Freedom Unbound

**Title:** Freedom Unbound  
**Song:** "306" - Emilie Autumn  
**Characters/Pairing:** Claire  
**Rating:** G  
**Genre:** Post-Series (so technically AU)  
**Warnings:** Mentions of character death  
**Notes: **Written using the mp3 player/iPod music meme which says: _Choose a subject and put your entire music collection on shuffle, hit play, and write. Write for as long as each song plays and move on to a different writing when the song switches (even if it's mid-sentence). Go for 5-10 songs. _

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_My reasons to live  
Were my reasons to die  
But at least they were mine  
Now I've freedom unbound  
__Cut the laces of life  
_"306" - Emilie Autumn 

It's been nearly a century since she should have died. Since then, she's pretended to be her own granddaughter, great niece, fourth cousin six times removed.

Now, she thinks it's time to give up the Bennett family name.

She's watched over them—some kind of genetic twist on the guardian angel myth—long enough to see the line dwindle and, finally, pass with the death of Lyle's childless great, great, great grandson.

Tomorrow, she will go to the cemetery and put nondescript white Tulips on her father's grave, a spray of delicate blue Forget-Me-Nots on her mother's.

In the language of flowers, they mean forgiveness. And forever remembering.


	5. Any Word Could Be the Last

**Song: ** "We Could Leave Right Now" - The Oysterband  
**Pairing/Characters: ** Samuel/Vanessa  
**Genre: ** Pre-Series, Gen, Drama  
**Summary: ** Drabbled spurred by the music meme, which is a _"write small, write fast_" challenge.  
**Word Count** 543  
**Notes:** FFnet borked my formatting (you will pry my em dashes from my cold dead fingers!), so I've had to replace some punctuation using the editor. Any weird mistakes are a result of that malfunction, dear readers. (I know you're out there...even if you're not commenting. I can see the reader stats.) Comments are welcome, of course.

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_**Any Word Could Be the Last**_

_**-0-0-0-**_

_"__Put down the music and talk  
Your rumors and regrets  
Fading silhouettes  
All you need to do is walk away..."_

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She is lying with her head on his lap, reading through a chapter in her _Music in Western Civilization_ text and trying not to doze off as he runs his fingers through her hair, gently untangling the curls and fanning the length out across his thighs.

Hes always been fascinated by her hair and she has no problems with that, especially when it leads to the kind of attention shes getting now, though it's making her eyes heavy and she has a mid-term to study for.

And perhaps it's the massage induced haze, or the names of long dead composers scurrying around in her brain, that keep her from immediately understanding the words that have left his mouth.

Her eyes fly open. What? And he's staring at her with that little half-smile that's become so familiar over the last month.

_"Marry_ me."

And she's off his lap like shes been burned, ignoring the sharp snap of pain on her scalp where a few strands of hair break. But she can't ignore the way his smile fades or the dulling of his eyes and she thinks—_knows_—her reaction could have been much better.

"I...Samuel—"

He doesn't let her finish. He's up and in her space and his mouth is on hers and he tastes sweet—hint of strawberry ice cream still lingering on his tongue—and it's hard to breathe and even harder to think, when he's murmuring his plan against her lips.

"Your dreams," he breathes, "Your fairy tale cottage, I can give you that. And more. Marry me. Come with me. We could do it today. Go down to Jersey...you once said you'd love to get married on a beach."

"This is...Samuel—I _can't_ just go and marry you."

"Why?"

"Why? I have _obligations_. To my family." She gestures around the room. "To myself."

"What about to us?"

_"Samuel..."_ She closes her eyes.

Shes 19.

Shes not ready for this.

Not ready for this reality.

Not ready for this conversation.

They'd been having _such_ a good time together.

She never imagined when he showed up in her room barely a month ago, that they would be _here_.

God, if anything she thought _she'd_ be running after _him_, begging him for some kind of commitment. She'd fallen for a bad boy image...and a man who seemed to want nothing more than to settle down.

And where did that leave her?

She opens her eyes and finds he's backed away from her, tall frame slightly stooped, retreating like an animal that's been kicked. And she wants to reach for him but she thinks that may do more harm than good.

"Samuel," she says again. His name is going to be branded on her tongue after this. "I have school to think about. My education. My future. My career. I cant just run off and—"

"And be the wife of a _carny_." The venom in his voice sears her.

"That's not what I _mean_." He turns away, gives her his back, but she sees the shudder run through him. "Samuel—_Please_," she says and the word constricts in her throat.

When the door closes behind him, the latch _clicks_ with such a note of finality that it makes her chest ache.

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_**End.**_


	6. How Soon Is Now?

"How Soon Is Now"

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_You shut your mouth  
How can you say  
I go about things the wrong way  
I am a human and i need to be loved  
Just like everybody else does_

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One of the things he loves about Mohinder is the man's incessant surety.

"Do you honestly think this is going to work?" Mohinder spits from his chair. "That I would actually come to you? Willingly?"

"Willingly, Mohinder?" Sylar smiles and the feel of it stretching across his face is strange, as though he hasn't done it in quite some time; a by-product of spending so much time under faces that are not his own. "Yes. I do think you'll come to me willingly."

He presses his fingertips to the mirror. And there appears the image of Molly, sweet Molly, reading alone in her bedroom and growing smaller, like a camera is moving out frame by frame…to the front of the house, the street, the neighborhood, and then the great mass of the continent that Mohinder had hoped would keep Molly hidden.

"Because the alternative?" Sylar says. "Is so much worse."


End file.
